Background
Noël Bernard was born on March 13, 1874, in Paris, France, the son of François Bernard, a wealthy cloth and textiles distributor, and Marie-Marguerite Bernard. His mother worked as a milliner to fund his studies.
1895
Paris, Ile-de-France, France
Noël Bernard gained a Bachelor of Science with Honours between 1895 and 1897 in Mathematics, Physics, and Natural Sciences (i.e., biology and geology) from École normale supérieure.
1902
Caen, Normandy, France
In 1902, Noël Bernard was offered an assistant professorship at Caen Botanical Institute headed by Octave Lignier.
1908
Poitiers, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
In 1908, Noël Bernard was appointed a professor at the University of Poitiers to teach botany.
Noël Bernard was born on March 13, 1874, in Paris, France, the son of François Bernard, a wealthy cloth and textiles distributor, and Marie-Marguerite Bernard. His mother worked as a milliner to fund his studies.
Bernard was considered an outstanding student while attending the Lycée Charlemagne later Lycée Condorcet senior high schools, both located in Paris, in preparation for entry to the Grandes Ecoles, of which he eventually gained entry to the grand school École Normale Supérieure.
Bernard eventually gained a Bachelor of Science with Honours between 1895 and 1897 in Mathematics, Physics, and Natural Sciences (i.e., biology and geology). Around the same time, he started giving lessons to repay his mothers debts.
In 1989, Bernard prepared for the prestigious Agrégation Des Sciences Naturelles examination for selection of high school teachers. He shared first place with Charles Perez, future Professor of Zoology at the University of Paris, and his friend at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.
At the end of 1898, Bernard started a thesis on orchids in Professor J. Costantin’s laboratory at the Botany Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. In parallel, in 1899 – 1900, he took courses in microbiology at the Pasteur Institute taught by the illustrious scientists Duclaux, Roux and Metchnikoff. These courses influenced his future research and concepts on the orchid-fungus symbiosis. Bernard defended his thesis on tuberisation in plants in November 1901.
Meanwhile, Bernard did his military service at Melun, near Paris. On May 3, 1899, while walking in the Fontainebleau forest near Melun, he discovered a dead, broken inflorescence of the achlorophyllous orchid Neottia nidus-avis that suggested to him a theory for orchid seed germination. His colonel allowed him to present his ideas to the Academy of Science in the same year.
Bernard was not held in high regard by Gaston Bonnier, a very powerful teacher at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and well known for his classic floras and, among other works, pioneering studies on the re-synthesis of lichens. Bonnier nicknamed Bernard "l’homme aux tubercules" (the tuber guy) and disliked Bernard especially for his (sometimes inappropriate) frankness. He only supported Bernard for an assistant professorship at Caen (East of France), then a backwater in plant sciences.
In 1908, Bernard was appointed professor at the University of Poitiers to teach botany. He worked primarily on the mycorrhizae in the role of orchid seed germination. He demonstrated at the Botanical Institute of the Garden of plants of Caen the symbiosis of the fungi in the tuberated roots of orchids. Bernard participated in the creation of the plant research station of Mauroc in Saint-Benoît. With the mathematician Émile Borel, biologist Maurice Caullery and the physicist Aimé Cotton, he co-published the scientific and literary journal La Revue du mois. He was also involved in work on the potato tuber at the time of his death on January 26, 1911, aged only 37, and was buried in the Saint-Benoît cemetery, Paris.
Early in life, Noël Bernard gave lessons to repay his mothers debts, sometimes to royal families, e.g. Martha, Princess Bibesco, which was ironic as he considered himself an anarchist.
When Noël Bernard began his work it had already been known for some time that orchids were mycorhizally infected plants. But it was Bernard, in a 1900 paper and his doctoral thesis of 1901, who determined that the relationship was obligatory; the presence of the fungus, he found, had become necessary for the germination of the seed. Since this infection was chronic and always present, the morphological features characteristic of many orchids, such as a tuberous root and atrophied vegetal organs, were actually fungus-induced symptoms. In analyzing the life cycles of several orchids, Bernard found differing degrees of fungal infection present. In some, such as, the Ophrydeae, periods of noninfection and, therefore, morphological elaboration alternated with periods of infection and tuberization of the roots. In others such as the Neottia, the plant is never free of the fungus, and its vegetal apparatus is reduced to no more than a rhizome.
Bernard’s experimental work began with the isolation in pure culture for the first time of the endophyte. From more than twenty different orchid species three new species of fungus were isolated: Rhizoctoniarepens, widespread among the Orchidaceae, and two more localized species, Rhizoctonia mucorides and Rhizoctonia lanuginosa. As a verification, he inoculated previously sterile orchid seeds with the fungus and, in 1904, brought about germination in this artificially produced symbiont, inducing tuber formation. On the basis of these results, he was able to advise horticulturists as to how to ensure the germination in hothouses of orchids, until that time a very uncertain, seemingly capricious event. By contaminating the soil with Rhizoctonia repens, he was able to improve greatly the growers’ success.
Bernard announced this successful method for the germination of orchids at the international congress of horticulture held in Paris in 1905, only to find that his results were not unanimously confirmed by other workers; This disappointment led him to a reexamination of his fungal cultures, and therefore to the discovery of the phenomenon of attenuation of the fungi after having been cultured for lengths of time in vitro.
Further investigations revealed the physiological mechanism of the "disease" caused by fungal infection. From experiments, Bernard concluded that the fungus converted starch into sugar, and it was the increased osmotic pressure that stimulated growth and germination. In apparent verification of this, he found that tuberization could be produced in theorchid Bletilla without infection if the orchid were placed in a medium of high carbohydrate concentration. Similar results were obtained with the germination of orchids that normally required the presence of a virulent fungus (it was later shown that the essential function of the fungus was to convert complex carbohydrates to simple sugars, and not necessarily to provide increased osmotic pressure).
His friends remembered him as a brilliant, clear-thinking, enthusiastic and charming man.
In 1907, Noël Bernard married Marie-Louise Martin, a mathematician from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-aux-Roses. The couple had a son, Francis.